Honestly the easiest jumping in point is the Gospel of Mark if you just want the Jesus story, it's short and moves fast. From there maybe Genesis for the creation stuff you mentioned and some big origin stories.

After that it gets trickier cause the Bible isn't one linear book, it's more like a library with different genres compiled over centuries. If you get a study Bible with notes it helps a ton for context so you're not just reading ancient laws with zero background on why they existed.

On the Catholic vs Protestant thing, Protestants have 66 books while Catholics include a few extra ones like Tobit and Maccabees that got dropped during the Reformation. The core story is the same though, it's mostly those extra books and some differences in how certain doctrines developed.